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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Tombstone Tuesday - Where Is the Body?

Simeon F. Brown died while serving in the Civil War. He contracted swamp fever in New Orleans and died in Marine Hospital. Records show he was initially buried in Cypress Grove Cemetery but was disinterred and moved to the Chalmette National Cemetery. However, he has a grave stone in his hometown of Bethel, Maine. That stone is inscribed for both Simeon and his wife, Harriet C. Bean, who apparently never remarried. I wonder where his body actually remains. What type of records would show whether his body was moved a second time and brought home to Maine? Was it common to erect a gravestone at home even if the body remained in the National Cemetery? I'm interested in hearing from anyone with similar stories. So far, the consensus seems to confirm what I suspected - that it is unlikely the body was moved from Louisiana and that the tombstone in Maine is a memorial marker for Simeon and marks the grave of his wife Harriet.

1870 Census shows Harriet, her two daughters, and her mother living with her brother's family.

I have an ancestor with a Civil War gravestone in Beverly. However, I know for a fact that he died in a terrible accident during the war that left all the bodies unidentifiable (an ironclad was bombed, all the bodies were burned or steamed to death). I'm very sure he is in a mass grave in Alabama, and not in Beverly, Mass.